Maxed Out: The Movie

I've spend the last two hours watching the film Maxed-Out (yes, I have a hard job, why do you ask?) over on We Need to be Debt Free's blog. They have posted the movie in it's entirety and I would suggest that you go see. It's one of the better documentaries I've seen about money. You can find it here.

Watching that movie made me laugh, cry, feel bad and get horribly angry. Just like most of the people there, I constantly see people with mounds of debt and tell myself "I'll never let that happen to me." or "That'll never happen!". Well, the truth is, it can and it could.

But, watching that film has given me an even-larger drive to spend my entire life debt-free. I refuse and hate paying interest and fees - it's all basically extra income for the CC companies that, really, they didn't earn. Yikes.

It's a scary world out there, especially for those with debt.

I won't give away some of the stories, but one woman was talking about her son that had $12,000 in CC debt while he was in college and the mother said "That kind of stuff just never happened."

I wonder how many of my friend's parents really know how much debt they are in. H has got $14,000 in CC debt, while K has $10,000 in CC debt. Neither of these debts are school debt. I know lots of other people with school debts.

Visiting the Maxed Out website, one review made me stop and think. It read:

"Quite something. When somebody can make a film about credit-card debt, with every expectation that it will reach theaters and ordinary Americans will shell out $8 to $11 to sit and watch it, we've arrive at a particular cultural moment." - Salon.com

How true. It's a wierd fascination. People with debt (or no debt, but shouldn't be spending), will spend their hard-earned money to watch a movie about how horrible debt it. What are we looking for? Is it to watch people that have it worse off than we do? Is it to find the Holy Grail of answers in getting out of debt? Is it to escape? To be reminded that we aren't alone?

Who knows...

Below is the U.S. Gross National Debt. Yes I know it's a lot more complicated than a number...but that number is pretty dang huge.

The Gross National Debt: